Microsoft Releasing Faster Xbox 360 Dashboard This Year

You know, this is one of the things that's really bugged me about the Xbox 360. (This and the whole "reliability" thing.) The console's Dashboard has always been terribly slow. In fact, if you want to really frustrate yourself in the middle of massively multiplayer deathmatch action on this console, just accidentally tap the Xbox 360 Guide button (the silver and green thing in the middle of the controller) and watch, horrified, as the Xbox Guide sslllllooowwwwwlllyyyy comes up on the screen, interrupting your game, and making you wait ever longer to dismiss it. The New Xbox Experience (NXE) didn't fix this issue at all. (Contrary to this stupid comment at Gizmodo: "Did anyone else notice? When NXE launched, it was pretty quick. But it's just gotten slower...and slower." Wake up, guys. It was never quick, and was always slow.)

Anyway. They're supposedly going to fix it.

During his last podcast, Xbox spokesperson/kind guidance counselor Major Nelson revealed that a "faster" dashboard update would be coming later this year with "a lot of very cool new features."

Hopefully, they really do fix it. Because nothing makes the Xbox 360 feel slower than clicking that stupid button by mistake.

Maybe I don't know any better, but I never seemed to have a problem with it. If I accidently press mine, it comes up really quick and then I hit the "B" button and it goes away really quick. Maybe it has something to do with online or gold versus sliver. I have a silver account and don't play online.
The only time the dashboard seemed slow was when I had my slow Internet connection (Cellular network). When I went to the marketplace or anything that is had to go out online to get, it was slow. Now with my 5Mb AT&T U-verse connection, it never seems slow.

So far, my Xbox 360 that was purchased in May 2007 is still holding up 2 years later. Today, I'm using the Windows Media Center capabilities in concert with Windows 7. I've have notice at times that NXE does slow to a crawl and that needs to be fixed for certain.
However, I'm more concerned with them adding compatibility with the iTunes/iPod content. While playing music is nice, it would be nice to be able to watch all your videos. I'm sure they can whip up a codec that will allow it even if the source is protected. Also, it would be nice if the iPod Touch and iPhone's were able to direct connect with the 360.
Hopefully the Zune Store in the fall will finally get some anime. That's something both the iTunes Store and others are lacking. However, I do think that's the fault of the anime studios like Toei, Bandai/Sunrise, Bones, and the rest.
The only other thing Microsoft could do is scrap the ridonkulous points system. We all deal in cash. Its corny and it needs to go.

I doubt we'll see the end of Microsoft Points. It's a nice little scam that lets Microsoft earn interest on our money and reduce the number of payments they process.
The slowness of the dashboard is related to how much you have downloaded from the Marketplace. The larger your download history the more it bogs down the dashboard for some reason, and so bizarrely this affects their best customers. This problem has existed for ages and Microsoft have refused to even acknowledge it until now. Hopefully the dashboard update will fix it.

I should add the problem affects me really badly because I have downloaded lots of songs for Guitar Hero and Rock Band so my download history has a huge number of entries. The Marketplace sometimes takes 10 minutes to load for me. The mini-guide can freeze for about 30 seconds when trying to access anything.

Ya. It's slow. If they could also speed up the MCE interface through xbox..that would be cool as well. I think a good XBLA game would be to try to kill your avatar when NATAL comes out. Like you scan objects like tomatoes and baseballs and virtually throw them at your digital self until you knock the dude out. I hate me.

My name says it all. The Xbox 360 is a horrible piece of crap. The wii dolls dashboard update was just so bad. As subzero said the points system is beyond stupid.
Just go here....
http://www.battlefield1943.com/
That would be 1200 MS points for 360 players and for the rest of the world on a PC or PS3 $15.

I like my PS3.
I think I might trade-up (read: sell on eBay) my PSP 2000 for the new PSP Go when they come out, so long as I can get downloadable copies of most of the games that I have on UMD. There are a couple that I'd like to keep. Not all of them though. I just got FF7 (again - had it for PC) on the PlayStation Store, and I like that I can transfer savegames back and forth from PSP to PS3 depending on whether or not I want to play it in "HD" (I know it's not HD, but it's a 50" TV), or on the go.
I wish Microsoft had more variation to the types of content available on the 360. It's not a bad gaming system, but most of the games are available cross-platform now.
The one thing I'd REALLY like to see Sony do, that I think would be a "killer app" for the PSP is to make Home available on it. I mean, it has WiFi already, and it has a 16:9 screen and stuff. How hard would it be to scale the graphics to fit within the envelope of a PS2 (same approx. gfx capabilities of a PSP)? Storage wouldn't be that much of a big deal, since memory cards are uber-cheap now too.
Oh, and Xi was pretty good. I hope to see more game-like stuff like that on Home.
I'd love to see Sony pick up some URU IP for Home. It seems like a perfect match actually. 500,000 Xi players can't be wrong. You'd swear that some of the URU designers actually worked on Home, because of the quality of it. It just needs more interactive story branches and such, but they need to be more polished and with better puzzles. Xi was a bit of a hack-job, and seemed rushed (it ran for 12-weeks and was updated about every 4 days, but the puzzles were difficult, but lame).

Paul, PLEASE just buy one of the new Jasper systems. I always hear you and Leo on Windows Weekly complaining about reliability and *noise* of you Xbox360s. The noise issue in peticular with the new releases has been fixed. I believe the failure rate has also diminished with the new cored systems.
The new Japser I have over here in Japan is quiet! I was really amazed. I have a 1first year 360 and I did notice that it was noisy, but all has been fixed in that department with the release of the Jaspers.
I cannot say anything yet about reliability of the Jasper core 360s, but I have not heard any daily reports of them failing. They appear to drastically fix the overheating issue.
Please get one...please

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